Results

The project

Avaelgo is pleased to have partnered with Microsoft Consulting Services on an important project for a multinational banking group.

The main beneficiary is the Software Development department responsible for developing the software running inside many banks throughout the world.

We have been involved in the project from its beginning. Together with the Microsoft Enterprise Partner Group (EPG) team, we have helped start the Dev/Test solution as part of a bigger Microsoft Azure initiative.

The objectives

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minimize the overall cost of Dev/Test environments;

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improve the whole development process, by shortening the lifecycle/iteration time;

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empower the Development and QA team to create their own environments, when needed.

The approach

Throughout the project we have designed and implemented the Dev/Test strategy, which can be summarized:

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Use Visual Studio Team Services as a Continous Integration / Continous Delivery tool, with PowerShell

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Use Azure Resource Manager JSON templates to create environments (Resource Groups), and PowerShell DSC to install and configure prerequisites on the VMs wich are part of the environment and do application deployments

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Define Build and Release definitions that are uniquely created and customized for the development team’s needs

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Develop a portal to enable the development team to Start, Stop, Delete environments when they wish, in order to minimize the waste

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We are currently working on a customized solution to Stop and Start environments at certain moments of the day, so they won’t bring in costs when they are not needed.

The results

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Cost Reduction

The total cost of the Dev/Test environments has been reduced to approx 18.000 EUR (estimate) from approx 30.000 EUR per year and will be further reduced. We have worked with one development team so far, others 4-5 are planned for the next months.

Time saving

The time to have a Dev / QA / Staging environment has been reduced from 80 hours (or 2 work weeks) to 1.5 hours, and it is done by the Dev and QA team, at their own pace and desired moment.

Full control

The initial concern seen by the IT department was that developers and QA specialists will be able to create environments when they want, leading to an increase of the overall cost. This risk has been lowered by a dashboard where anyone (based on authorization and roles) can see in real time all the running environments that are used for Dev/Test. Should measurements or consumption rise above a preset trash hold limit, they can take action start, stop or even delete these environments.